And so the summer movie season begins.

Summer is always a great time to go to the movies. Why? Because everyone's out of school, we can stay out late, go to midnight releases, all without having to worry about if we have exams the next day. It's pretty awesome. So, without further delay, here's the list of summer movies that my friends and I will most likely be checking out.

Marvel's The Avengers (5/4) — Obviously this kind of opened the summer season (in a big way, it's the highest grossing film of all time now), so having this come out this past week was a great way to kick off the summer season.

Dark Shadows (5/11) — I mostly just want to see this because, let's face it: the TV show was so campy and corny.

Battleship (5/18) — I feel like I need to make it clear that I don't really want to see this movie. Yeah, I like explosions but a movie based off of a game that's more fun when played with pizza boxes and shots just doesn't really cut it for me. I mostly just want to see it so I can poke at all the little plot holes in it.

Men In Black III (5/25) — I'm not a huge fan of the MIB series—I'm a borderline fan, not obsessed but not completely unaware of what they are. But it looks good. I'll need a refresher, because I don't really remember what's happening in the other two movies, but it still looks good!

Snow White and the Huntsmen (6/1) — In the spectrum of all the movies and TV shows about Snow White/fairy tales/whatever that have come out this year (seriously, where did all this hype come from, these things have been around for hundreds of years...), this one actually looks the best because it looks so dark. It's a different take on a classic fairy tale (at least, I think it is, I obviously haven't seen the movie yet), and ... wait for it ... Kristen Stewart actually shows some emotion. So, it looks pretty good.

Prometheus (6/8)— It just got announced that this movie has an "R" rating. I've wanted to see it since I heard about it, but now I really want to see it because it means that they won't hold anything back. Pure Ridley Scott sci-fi goodness. Bring it. I seriously don't even know what this movie is about, I mean, the previews have been pretty cryptic and I don't want to go and search out what it's about online, but this movie just looks so awesome.

Brave (6/22) — I'm a sucker for Pixar movies. It looks good.

G.I. Joe: Retaliation (6/29) — Yeah, Rise of Cobra wasn't perfect. But I am only a female—who am I to pass up an opportunity

The Amazing Spider-Man (7/3) — Andrew Garfield, I love him so much. This movie looks so good, I'm so excited. My inner fangirl is just dying at all the comic book stuff that's going to be happening this summer. We didn't get tickets to Comic-Con (which kind of killed my soul), but these will have to do. Maybe we'll just fly to California and skulk around the outside of the convention centre.

Savages (7/6) — It looks okay. I'm not a fan of Blake Lively, but whatever, it looks okay.

The Dark Knight Rises (7/20) —I think that, in light of all the Avengers hype, I may have passed over this a little bit but I'm truthfully so excited for this movie. I love all of Nolan's Batman films and I'm really looking forward to it. Mostly because one of my friends and I have it in our heads that Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character, cop John Blake, is going to be Nightwing. We're aware that there will be no more Batman movies from Nolan, but hey. You never know what those studios have up their sleeves.

The Bourne Legacy (8/3) — Jeremy Renner. And his arms. And his face. That's enough for me. Also: Edward Norton, who I think is so cute.

Total Recall (8/3) — This movie will be awesome. Period. That's all. I'm so freaking excited for this movie. And it comes out the same day as the Jeremy Renner/ Edward Norton arms extravaganza/face extravaganza. This is the 'Colin Farrell is really hot all around' extravaganza.

That's all I can think of right now. There will probably be a couple more movies that I'll end up seeing this summer, but for right now, these will all do.

The #Avengers is a comic nerd's dream. #LokisArmy

Oh, hey. It's been a while. I know it's been a while since we've talked, but I feel I should let y'all know ....

The Avengers came out last night.

And it was bleeping amazing.

There are so few movies that have been able to genuinely impress me lately (cough the suckfest that was Hunger Games cough), but I can honestly say that this is probably my favourite movie ever made. Early predictions are slating it to take over as one of the biggest grossing weekends ever, and I'm sure that that'll come from me somewhat since I'm seeing it a few times this weekend.

I am against spoilers. Therefore I won't post what happens in the movie until a few weeks from now, but I just want to preface the movie for you: all of my friends and I are huge comic nerds. Really, we could probably write a book called "Nerdism Amongst The Corn" because I really think we were the most obsessed people in the theater that night. I'm going to skip straight to the end (side note: stay all the way through the credits), but two of my friends and I let out a collective three-person-consecutive gasp when we saw the proceeding scenes. You don't understand. Now we have to wait for Avengers 2 to come out, even though we've already planned out what's inevitably going to happen in this movie.

This movie was so well done. All hail Joss Whedon. It's the kind of movie where it got out at 2:30 am and we stood around outside the theater and talked until 5am. Everything about this movie thoroughly impressed me. We laughed. We cried. I screamed a few times and I hit one of my friends when something really upsetting happened.

The Avengers movie was the kind of movie that had very serious undertones--we're talking about the destruction of our world, here--but then there's people like Tony Stark who have an inability to take things seriously until shit gets really real, but who will do anything to save people. We have Thor, for whom this battle is considerably more personal than for everyone else. Hulk, who befriends one of the Avengers as we see at the end of the film and despite his previous saying of "we're not a team, we're a time-bomb", ends up having that view challenged. Captain America, who has some of the funniest comic-relief lines because, well, he's from the forties. Hawkeye, who gets a considerable amount of screen time and is proven to be an integral part of the team and Black Widow, a formidable assassin who, under her tough-girl exterior, exhibits true fear in the face of death.

And then there's Loki. Before I get into Tom Hiddleston's performance,  I have to preface this by saying that Loki is my favourite Marvel character ever. And this is a girl that loves Thor and loves Iron Man, for me, it will always be Loki as my favourite character. It is incomprehensible how much I love Loki. In the film, Loki is perfect. Loki is flawless. In Thor, we're introduced to this 'son' of Odin who is somewhat timid, living in the shadow of his older brother. Loki's descent (or ascent) into the powerful being that he appears as in Avengers is a completely different character from what we see in Thor. It's still very distinctly the trickster, but it's more the Loki we see towards the end of the film. It's the sarcastically callous and yes, evil, god that we are introduced to in this film. I always think back to Thor when I look back on this movie now, because there's a scene in that movie where Loki is speaking with Odin, and the conversation goes:

Odin: You're my son. I wanted only to protect you from the truth.
Loki: What, because I am the monster that parents tell their children about at night?
And then, right here is where we see the anger:
Loki: It all makes sense now, why you favoured Thor all these years. Because no matter how much you claimed to love me, you could never have a frost giant sitting on the throne of Asgard.

This conversation is the turning point in Loki's character development. There is a moment in Avengers where we briefly see his good side again but it's very brief. In Avengers we see a dark side of Loki that was only slightly explored in Thor. He's a wonderful villain. The best.

And oh my. I had my doubts about Mark Ruffalo as the Hulk, but he was so, so impressive. I loved his performance through and through, and furthermore, I rescind my previous doubts because he erased them all. He was funny in a very deadpan way--he had a certain kind of self-depreciating humour.

I can't say enough about this movie. Which means that it's time to go and see it again. The Avengers Assembled and they were great.

Avengers round-up.

I just want to make a little announcement pertaining to some Avengers news that has come to my attention.

But let's go back to the days of old when the first trailer came out and we all freaked out because THAT MEANT THAT IT WAS REALLY HAPPENING, AVENGERS, IT'S SO SOON. COME TO MEEEEE.

AVENGERS ASSEMBLE!

We have clips. We have TV spots. We have all kinds of promotions (today I got a Tony Stark sticker from GetGlue. I LOVE STICKERS.) Below I've put the Loki and Nick Fury banter, which is probably one of my favourite, but I've listed the other trailers and clips below the video.

 

"Team" TV spot

"Head Count" TV spot

"Roll Call" TV spot

"Interrogation" TV spot

"Captain America" TV spot

"Hulk, smash!" TV spot

Official Trailer 2

Japanese Trailer because it's cooler than ours

Little Avengers Target Ad because it's so cute

Cabin In The Woods.

Here's a tip: if your jocky friend says that you should go spend a weekend with some friends at an abandoned cabin in the woods, don't do it. For the love of God, don't do it!

For your reference, this is a spoiler-free review.

Friday night my friend and I went to see the Joss Whedon movie (ALL HAIL JOSS WHEDON. *bows*) and let me just say that we were blown away. I'm disappointed that it was third at the box office behind Three Stooges and The Hunger Games (isn't everyone bored of that movie yet?) but I thought it was great and so we took another friend to see it again on Saturday.

The problem with this movie is that there are not a whole lot of things that I can say about it without completely giving away the story, but I will say that this movie was incredibly smart. Whedon has a penchant for suspense that makes this movie unlike other horror movies. I mean, it was funny. But not like other horror movies are funny in the way that they're so dumb that they're hilarious, the way the suspense was presented and the comic relief that one of the characters provided made the movie scary but awesome. It's not what you expect, and it's not just a regular horror story. It was brilliant.

Seriously--there aren't really any good movies coming out in the next few weeks, so you should go catch this. I've seen it twice and I would be more than happy to see it again because it was that good.

I mean, this movie is holding me over until Avengers comes out in three weeks. THREE WEEKS.

Looper.

Seriously, I can't even recognize Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
This movie looks great, yo.

I was going to make a giant master post regarding Gary Ross leaving the Hunger Games franchise, but I deemed this more important. There is a movie that's coming out called "Looper". Look at this BAMFing poster.

Looper. You can watch the trailer here since it's on Apple Trailers and I can't find a trailer on youtube.

I'm all for futuristic movies where things are kind of old school and instead of progressing we've regressed. Needless to say, it looks awesome. This is the reason I wish I could go to all the film festivals and see these movies ahead of time. Regardless, I'm looking forward to it. Comes out in September. I can barely recognize Joe Go Levitt in the trailer--half the time he was on the screen I wasn't sure that it was actually him and I had to do double takes! The synopsis provided on Apple Trailers goes as such:

In the futuristic action thriller Looper, time travel will be invented - but it will be illegal and only available on the black market. When the mob wants to get rid of someone, they will send their target 30 years into the past, where a "looper" - a hired gun, like Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) - is waiting to mop up. Joe is getting rich and life is good... until the day the mob decides to "close the loop," sending back Joe's future self (Bruce Willis) for assassination. The film is written and directed by Rian Johnson and also stars Emily Blunt, Paul Dano, and Jeff Daniels. Ram Bergman and James D. Stern produce.

SEE DOESN'T THAT SOUND AWESOME?! Yes. Yes it does.

Gary Ross is NOT boss: an analysis of why he should NOT direct Catching Fire.

As fans of Hunger Games know all too well at this point, director Gary Ross's negotiations regarding him directing the next film in the franchise just aren't going well at all. While this has a great many fans upset about it, I actually have decided that I just don't care. Why? Well, let's look at the facts.

1. SHAKY CAM. He wants three million dollars for a movie where, for part of it, he took a handheld handycam and followed JLaw around that North Carolina forest that looked like my backyard. Yep. If people are going to get paid $3 million for that, plus 5% backend, I should be rich.
2. Everyone seems to be really upset about it because they think that Hunger Games was the greatest movie of the century (seriously, I follow a few Hunger Games blogs on my facebook and it's all "look at THG usurping Titanic and Wrath of the Titans and American Reunion and I just want to tell them all to shut the hell up.) But I want to point out that with the exception of Lord of the Rings (off the top of my head), a LOT of print-to-movie franchises have had different directors. Harry Potter, starting with POA, had Cuaron, who set the darker tone for the rest of the series. Then they switched to two more directors, with Yates ending the series (OotP through DHP2) I remember hating it when I was thirteen, but now it actually makes a lot of sense. The 'Avengers' series of Marvel movies all have different directors. 
3. These stupid websites that think that making a website called "Gary Ross Is Boss" or other stupid things like that are going to make Lionsgate up the ante and pay him more or get him to accept the lower pay that they're going to end up paying him because, let's face it, Lionsgate bit off more than they could chew here. Hashtags do not pay director's salaries. 
4. It has been established that Ross's favourite book in the series was the first one and that he's not nearly as passionate about the other ones as he was about Hunger Games. So if he's not as passionate, and would probably half-ass it, why do you want him directing it? Why not get someone who is more excited about the second book and will be willing to use more special effects instead of passing off the special effects to someone who made it look like a teenager with a macbook had done it? We've got a spinning cornucopia and blood rain that needs to be done properly and I don't think Ross can do it. Everyone says they love him but does anyone really know what all he's done? I doubt half the people that have seen Hunger Games have EVER seen Seabiscuit. EVER. And if they have seen Pleasantville, they probably don't remember it or get what it was about. 
5. It just drives me nuts that so many kids are so stuck on Gary Ross only because they thought that the movie was so true to the book, and maybe that's what bothers me the most. I've said it before, I'll say it again, books and movies should be mutually exclusive. A movie should have its own quirks and fun stuff, and then the books should have their own little things that make them unique. This always pisses people off because then they say "ugh, they left so much stuff out", but I think that in the case of Hunger Games, the problem was that Ross tried SO hard to stay close to the book that every little thing he left out was like a big gaping hole in the plot. Marvel didn't get shot in the neck. Buttercup was black and white (which makes no fucking sense.). The Mockingjay pin came from Katniss, to Prim, then back from Prim to Katniss. Gale was spot on as the boob of the series. Peeta didn't sell it for me at all, and while I love JLaw, she didn't exactly complete Katniss for me.The most perfect person in that film for me was a tie between Haymitch, Rue, and Caesar, because they were the most beautiful and accurate creatures of ever. 
6. Maybe this time we'll actually be able to hear the soundtrack instead of just having so. much. dead. silence. I didn't feel like I was watching a movie, and I didn't feel like I was living the Hunger Games through Katniss's eyes.
7. Maybe the ending won't be terrible.

I feel like I'm the only person who has a considerable amount of criticism for this film and it's because it was so bad. I really hated it, I couldn't stand it. Biggest disappointment of the year. And I think that having a new director will really change that for me by the time Catching Fire comes around. Maybe Katniss will have a soul. Maybe Peeta will be more Peeta-y. Gale, don't change, you're the most perfect boob ever. Your angry, brooding stares at the camera as just about as good as your character can get.

And that's my rant on Gary Ross. Please leave the franchise and give it to someone who will give me a movie that's a combination of Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter and Total Recall or something. I felt like I was watching a student film from a kid that goes to one of those for-profit film schools and thinks that they're actually going to make it somewhere in the world with their associate's degree in film. 

Total Recall: first full-trailer.

This looks too AWESOME. It's like Minority Report but with Colin Farrell playing Tom Cruise's character and the snowsuits from Inception. Looks good. But you have to remember that I'm a crazy sci-fi/future junkie so of course it's gonna look awesome to me.

I'm just tired of movies doing this Inception bullshit where they release a trailer for the trailer using footage from the trailer. BRAAAAAAAAMMMMMMM.